Ala. Democrats Scramble To Bounce Shoah Denier From Primary Ballot

A Democratic candidate for Alabama’s attorney general’s office has been exposed as a Holocaust denier less than a month before the state’s June 6 primaries.

Larry Darby believes that there were no more than 140,000 Jewish deaths during World War II — most of them having been brought on by typhus — and that the historically accepted figure of 6 million killed is a lie promoted by the “Holocaust industry,” The Associated Press reported last week.

The revelation about Darby, who ran for attorney general in 2002 as a Libertarian, has sent the state’s Democratic Party scrambling to keep him out of the two-way primary, which also includes Mobile County’s district attorney, John Tyson Jr.

We do “not stand for what Mr. Darby has been espousing,” said Jim Spearman, executive director of the state’s Democratic Party, in an interview with the Forward. Spearman said that the party is currently determining whether it can keep Darby out of the primary based on a provision in its bylaws stating that conduct deemed “incompatible” with a declaration of candidacy could be grounds for disqualification.

According to a poll of 400 registered voters, conducted last month for Alabama press outlets, Tyson has 21% of the vote against Darby’s 12%, with about two-thirds of respondents undecided. The survey had a margin of error of five percentage points.

But Spearman said that the poll, conducted so far in advance of a relatively low-profile race, is misleading. He added that political insiders view Tyson as heavily favored to win.

Darby, a self-described Dixiecrat, reportedly favors the imposition of martial law to stop illegal emigration from Mexico.

“Someone needs to speak up for the white man,” he told the Decatur Daily News. “It’s been a long time since someone took up that bat and took a swing for the white man.”

He also said that Alabama should recall its National Guard troops from Iraq because “they are fighting for Israeli interests and not for Alabama or United States interests.”

Although Darby’s antisemitism did not draw widespread attention until last week, the candidate was previously involved with prominent Holocaust deniers. One of them is David Irving, to whom he played host at a meeting last July. As a result of the visit, Darby was forced to resign as president of the Atheist Law Center, which he founded after he earned a degree from the Montgomery, Ala.-based Jones Law School in 1999.

Last weekend, Darby traveled to Elmwood Park, N.J., to attend a meeting of the New Jersey unit of the National Vanguard, a group formed in 2005 by key activists who were expelled from the neo-Nazi National Alliance. According to the Anti-Defamation League, last weekend’s meeting was held at the Juvenile Order of United Automechanics Hall and was attended by roughly 20 people, including David Duke and Prussian Blue, a white-power pop group.

In a letter posted on the National Vanguard site, Darby argued that the posting of the Ten Commandments in government buildings — a practice opposed by several influential Jewish organizations — is actually an attempt to “telegraph” the notion that “Jewish Supremacism is the law.” He also took aim at several presidents for declaring an “Education Day” tied to the efforts of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement to promote the so-called Noahide Laws, the biblical rules that, according to Jewish tradition, should be obeyed by all human beings. “Upon examination,” Darby said, the laws “subjugate” non-Jews.

Another letter from Darby, posted on the Web site, includes a fund-raising pitch citing the poll that has him trailing by only nine points.

“Please help me close that gap,” Darby wrote. “I need money to make more personal appearances and buy campaign literature and other materials. You can help me make a difference.”

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